A Beam Tracing Approach to Acoustic Modeling for Interactive Virtual Environments

Virtual environment research has focused on interactive image generation and has largely ignored acoustic modeling for spatialization of sound. Yet, realistic auditory cues can complement and enhance visual cues to aid navigation, comprehension, and sense of presence in virtual environments. A primary challenge in acoustic modeling is computation of reverberation paths from sound sources fast enough for real-time auralization. We have developed a system that uses precomputed spatial subdivision and “beam tree” data structures to enable real-time acoustic modeling and auralization in interactive virtual environments. The spatial subdivision is a partition of 3D space into convex polyhedral regions (cells) represented as a cell adjacency graph. A beam tracing algorithm recursively traces pyramidal beams through the spatial subdivisionto construct a beam tree data structure representing the regions of space reachable by each potential sequence of transmission and specular reflection...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1998
• Where: SIGGRAPH
• Authors: Thomas A. Funkhouser, Ingrid Carlbom, Gary Elko, Gopal Sarma Pingali, Mohan Sondhi, Jim West
• Keywords: Acoustic Modeling, Beam Tracing, Computer Graphics, SIGGRAPH 1998, Virtual Environment